


The Cost of Deliverance

by thirteenghosts (newsbypostcard)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5962444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/thirteenghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been three months since he’s seen her. It’s been three months since she walked away from him, holding desperately onto the last shred of composure she possessed as she told him she had to go. It’s been three months since the stifling force of her, of her love or her ruthlessness or her authority, has elbowed its way into his space, and he’s so -- he’s just <em>so</em>--</p><p>He’s lost. He didn’t realize how much he’d relied on the force of her until she was gone. Bellamy’s never believed in anything his entire life that he couldn’t build for himself, but without Clarke, it’s like he’s lost track of which way is even up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cost of Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for 3x02

  


You know, Bellamy thinks, it’s -- funny. In a way.

Seeing Pike? It’s _funny_. Trust the fucking Earth Skills teacher to survive. Bellamy might be consumed with worry about the fact that they’ve hit yet another goddamn obstacle in bringing Clarke home, but he still has to laugh. He has to laugh, because Pike actually fucking made it -- and so did Bellamy. 

Against the odds, so -- after months on the ground by herself -- did Clarke.

At least until now.

Bellamy shakes Pike’s hand and says, “It’s good to see you, sir,” but what he means is: 

“Thank you.”

What really he means is:

_Remember the time I beat Clarke on the Earth Skills practical?_

It’s funny. _It is._

  


  


Bellamy has always been a strong leader.

He’d never have admitted it at the time, because he sure as shit went out of his way to make public the fact that he thought an Earth Skills class was fucking bullshit. His mother used to tell him that he was born cynical -- but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Octavia had been born, and _then_ he’d become cynical. Hiding under the floor, holding her to his chest to stifle a baby’s cries when the guard came in to make inspections, had made him that way; having to watch her struggle as a child, outgoing and brave, with never being able to leave her quarters. He’d had to pull her back by her coveralls once a week on average; he’d had to whisper hurried apologies into her ear as he’d jumped down beneath the floor with her once again, trying to bribe her into being quiet enough so as not to be found; he’d had to massage her neck later to work out the minor whiplash, even as he was angry with her for existing at the same time, and yet at the same time he personally wanted to hurt every single person who’d ever caused her a moment’s anguish in his life, just to confuse him even further.

Yeah. He’d been _made_ cynical. He’d been cynical for a long time. He wasn’t born that way. 

Still, he never really minded acting like he was.

He’d been so clear about the fact that he thought Earth Skills was bullshit, in fact, that he’d managed to weasel his way out of it one semester after another until he was actually on track to graduate without ever having taken it. He really thought he’d gotten out of it. He’d aced English, he’d nailed leadership, and with his natural talents of athleticism he always kind of assumed he’d enter the guard. Keep Octavia safe. Keep his mother safe. Keep his own damn self safe.

Rumours of his protectorship, as it turned out, would prove greatly exaggerated; but he didn’t know that at the time he got strongarmed into taking Earth Skills after all.

Delaying as long as he did turned out to be a curse and a blessing. Since it was in the curriculum for 13-14 year olds, he was the oldest in the course by far. There was nothing quite like turning 18 and trying to herd a bunch of barely-pubescents into formation, but he’d been good at it. He’d found it fairly easy to facilitate the discussion and streamline the good ideas into a clearer format. He’d hoped, with all the naivete he’d been blessed enough with at the time, that he’d never be stuck in a similar position again; but in hindsight it had been incredibly good practice.

Yet when all 100 pounds of 13-year-old Clarke Griffin had stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and that challenging stare, he’d instantly realized even at the time that he was probably not only gonna have to put up with her know-it-all bullshit for a limited time.

It had already been years by then since Clarke had made herself known to Bellamy as a royal pain in the ass. He remembered sitting once on Abby’s table at 14, with a laceration on his arm procured in a hasty attempt to keep Octavia out of view of passing prying eyes. He’d been trying to avoid giving himself away with his usual sidestepping remarks before Clarke, then 9, narrowed her eyes at him from the corner of the medical bay.

“That doesn’t sound right,” she’d told her mother, looking up from her math homework with suspicion.

“What do you mean?” Abby had asked her, half-distracted with the task of stitching Bellamy up on minimal anaesthetic.

“He got _that_ injury by _roughhousing_? I’ve never seen him out of his _quarters_. Who was he roughhousing with, his mom?”

“Clarke,” Abby had said warningly. “It’s not polite to question patients. Remember that talk we had about bedside manner?”

“You do it all the time.”

“Okay, well, it’s especially not polite for _you_ to question _my_ patients, how about that?”

Clarke had looked from her mother to Bellamy, then back to her math homework. “I’m just saying,” she’d muttered, despondent and certain.

“Okay, Clarke. I hear you.” And as Bellamy had cracked his eyes open just enough though the blinding pain of getting a needle threaded through his arm to get a good look at the tiny blonde menace that was trying to derail his life, Abby had given him a conferring look that had told him all he needed to know about just how much Clarke was gonna become a thorn in his side.

So it had, in respects, been utterly unsurprising to find her standing in front of him in fucking Earth Skills class somehow believing that she knew better than he did in terms of how to survive on an Earth they were never gonna see.

“We’ll never survive unless we stay on the move,” Clarke had told him, gesturing stiffly to the plan of action he’d jotted down amidst the brainstorming. At 13, it seemed she believed she had all the knowledge in the world on what it meant to survive.

“No,” Bellamy had said. “We need to hunker down.” Sometimes, Bellamy knew, leadership meant quashing stupid fucking ideas outright. And yet--

“That’s insane,” Clarke had told him, and squared her shoulders, as though to make herself taller.

Bellamy had gritted his teeth and turned to her, slowly. “If we stay on the move, we’ll be indefensible. Do you know what that means? Indefensible?”

“You mean your attitude right now?”

Clarke’s mouth had been quirked into a smile as she’d said it, as though she _enjoyed_ making his life difficult. Bellamy, in return, had only redoubled on his desire to get through this course as quickly as possible.

“Okay,” he’d said slowly. “What do _you_ think we should do, then, o small all-knowing one?”

“I think, _little man,_ ” she’d said fiercely, “that you’re too used to being on the Ark to get that there’s not many structures on Earth anymore. So unless we’ve magically found a bunker or something, we’re gonna build our shelter out of -- what?”

It had been, Bellamy had been forced to admit, an interesting point. “If we’re on Earth, we must’ve landed in a ship, right? That’s what this fantasy world entails, so fuck it, yeah. Let’s live in the ship.”

“Language,” Mr. Pike had called from the other side of the room; and Bellamy had been forced to pay attention to the fact that the entire class had stopped to watch this standoff. He vaguely registered that getting floated might’ve been preferable to this.

“We can’t _live_ in the _ship,_ ” Clarke had countered, obviously not nearly as cowed as he had been by 34 pairs of prying eyes; and yet, at 13, she hadn’t yet developed the ability to keep her doubt off her face.

“Why not? We live in one now, don’t we?”

“That’s -- not the same. If we get landed, we’ll be on a _drop ship_ , not the Ark, don’t you pay any attention?”

“Okay, whatever. If the ship is big enough to drop us, it’s big enough to house us.”

“And if we land in a high radiation zone?”

“ _Griffin._ ” Bellamy had run his hands over his face in exasperation. “Reality check: the whole damn planet is a high radiation zone! We land on Earth, we’re not gonna survive anyway. Why does it matter if--”

“Listen,” Clarke had said, and stepped closer, more challengingly, apparently utterly uncaring that he had a foot in height and eighty pounds on her. “You know that _bombs_ were _dropped_ , right? Eastern seaboard, the Midwest…”

“Yeah, Clarke, I know where they were dropped.”

“Then you know that there’s gonna be lush zones.”

“...What?”

“ _Lush zones._ Don’t you read?”

Bellamy had taken a second to be astonished. All he fucking _did_ was read. “I read,” he’d said defensively.

“Then you know that the areas _between_ where the bombs were dropped? They’re gonna get all the seeds, all the surviving organic material blown toward them. Anything that makes it through the blast of the bombs and can grow in radiation is gonna settle and thrive in the areas in between. It’s the only hope we have.”

Well… he didn’t read _science_. “Interesting,” he’d muttered.

“And plants? They’re the best shot at cleansing an area of radiation, plus the air quality’s just gonna be better. So if we land in a high radiation zone, staying in the ship…”

“Is a bad fucking idea,” Bellamy had said, nodding. “Okay, I get you. We land in a high radiation zone, we move.” He’d pointed at her sternly, but the tension had gone from his shoulders. It wasn’t beyond her; her smirk had intensified. “But if we land in a lush zone, we live in the ship.”

“Why? Why not explore?”

“Indefensibility, Clarke. We talked about this.”

“Like anything survived down there anyway,” she’d muttered; and Bellamy had shaken his head, only gesturing to the other group members to crowd around him as he’d edited in the plan they’d sketched out.

“You think trees survived down there, but creatures didn’t?” He’d looked up at her. She might’ve been a pain in his ass, but that didn’t mean her ideas were beyond engagement. “Strike out on your own if you want, Griffin. I won’t stop you. Good luck fighting whatever’s out there by yourself. May we fucking meet again.”

“Language!” Pike had shouted again; and Clarke had only kept her arms crossed and muttered under her breath, utterly unappreciative of the line he’d thrown her in bothering to listen to a 13-year-old at all.

Despite the attention their standoff had generated -- the fury in her eyes when he’d smirkingly showed her his final grade had been totally worth it.

She’d snatched the paper out of his hand, and he’d grinned all the wider as her eyes narrowed in on the grade that had sealed it for him:

_Teamwork: 100%_

She’d thrown the paper back at him, and he’d been just as happy never to hear her speak to him for the rest of the godforsaken course.

  


  


But it _had_ , at least, allowed him to step aside a little easier and let her in, four and a half years later, when they actually did land on Earth.

Bellamy had always been a leader. He’d _led_ his sister into a locked cell, after all; he’d _led_ his mother into the floating chamber, and now he’d _led_ himself down here onto this godforsaken rock, where there are mountain lions and fun murdering grounders and -- oh yeah -- Clarke fucking Griffin, still here to elbow her way in to challenge his authority with just as much clarity as she had at 13.

At first, things had felt manageable. They landed in one of Clarke’s beloved _lush zones_. They used the _ship_ as their _home base,_ as he always fucking intended. He was, once again, by far the oldest and so his leadership had, once again, been easily accepted; and his authority and ability to make decisions had led to certain perks that usually resulted in his being, if somewhat bewilderedly, undressed by a different girl every night of the week.

For the first fucking time -- even if he still had to keep an eye out for Octavia and her ever-present urge to wander -- he felt like this life was one he could claim as his own. Not his mother’s. Not Octavia’s.

Until things got out of control. 

Earth is not the Ark, and after a while of harsh but effective rule, ruthlessness proved itself inefficient at maintaining order after all. Wells was killed; Charlotte launched herself off a cliff; he, Bellamy, found himself giving the okay to string Murphy up.

All needlessly. None of it in the spirit of survival.

And then Clarke had elbowed her way back in.

She’d challenged his authority as usual -- only this time, she’d stood by his side instead of staring him down. They’d figured out a way to lead together -- to bounce their differences off one another until a solution became clear. They begrudged one another as much as they needed one another.

Things got easier, instead of harder, after that.

Or at least -- more accurately, Bellamy trusted that no one would kill anyone else as long as she stood in command. She could lead by his side or she could lead in his stead, and he felt less as if he was suddenly in charge of the entire colony over time, with the burden she’d helped him to bear.

  


  


Bellamy tries to return the favour, months later. He does. He does. He just doesn’t succeed.

By the time Bellamy sees Pike again, his belief in Clarke is as cloying as was his distaste. It’s been three months since he’s seen her. It’s been three months since she walked away from him, holding desperately onto the last shred of composure she possessed as she told him she had to go. It’s been three months since the stifling force of her, of her love or her ruthlessness or her authority, has elbowed its way into his space, and he’s so -- he’s just _so fucking_ \--

He’s lost. He didn’t realize how much he’d relied on the force of her until she was gone. Bellamy’s never believed in anything his entire life that he couldn’t build for himself, but without Clarke, it’s like he’s lost track of which way is even up.

Bellamy’s gotten to know Clarke -- or so he likes to think. He’s gotten to know her leadership style. He’s gotten to know that her ruthlessness handily outstrips his own, only to replaced in the next moment with such ferocious levels of heartfelt compassion that he is often as floored as he is inspired. He’s gotten to know the way she kills from a place of love; he’s gotten to know that it’s so much more fucking powerful than his own disposition to kill for order’s sake.

Clarke is better than him at surviving; he’s prepared to admit it now. She has outstripped him in more respects than just that. She has earned the better fucking grade when it comes to actually surviving on Earth, and there’s nothing more Bellamy wants in this world than to see her again so he can say as much to her face.

Finding Pike is the closest thing to a sign he’s seen in the months since Clarke’s left. He’s spent those months running their debate from years earlier over and over in his head, and he’s been struck time and time again by how fucking _right_ she was -- about all of it. True to her word, she’d found she couldn’t survive unless she was on the move; and true to his, he’d put down roots in Arkadia, lived in the ship, made sure his position was as defensible as possible.

After what they’d done at Mount Weather, she’d needed to leave just as much as he’d needed to stay. And he’d regretted every day since that _this_ isn’t somewhere that they could find a common ground.

Every single day, Bellamy wakes up and thinks of Clarke. Every day, he thinks: she was always going to leave. She told him five years ago she was going to leave, and when she did it -- _May we meet again,_ she’d said to him, some spark of irony obvious even behind the pain that blanketed her eyes -- he’d just … let it happen.

He had _let her leave._

He wouldn’t have been able to stop her; he knows that as much as he knows anything else. But that knowledge doesn’t make him regret the reality of it any less. 

And Bellamy feels so lost without her that sometimes he wastes time wondering if he could’ve gone with her after all. He knows better, on some level; he could never have stayed out there with her for long. They’re too different; he wouldn’t have lasted out there if he’d tried. But now it’s been three months without a glimpse, without a word, without any concrete evidence that Clarke is still okay, and he thinks that maybe, if he’d known then what he knows now, he’d suffer through the three months of tree living -- the way Clarke prefers, the way Octavia prefers -- just to be able to remember which way was up.

Just to know that she’s still safe. 

Just to have the proof. To be sure. He thinks, in hindsight, he could probably make that trade.

Every once in awhile, while traipsing through the woods on his way to negotiate with the grounders or to meet with Octavia or to run salvage at Mount Weather, he finds traces of her. Every time, despite himself, he has to pause to breathe. Every time, he stands there with his fist clenching over nothing or leaned against a tree, or grasping at the thing she’s left behind -- a trap wire, or a carcass, or a footprint only half-concealed instead of gone.

Bellamy has doubted every decision he’s made since she left, and he’s doubted every shred of evidence he’s found just the same. But Pike -- Pike believes in her too, even after all this time. He knows what Bellamy knows: that even hunted, even captive -- Clarke Griffin knows how the fuck to _survive._

The shred of hope Pike gives him blossoms in him only reluctantly, as though hesitant to break through his exhaustion; but some incredulous laugh leaves Bellamy eventually, mingled with muted gratefulness that he’s not the only one who believes in her, even after all she’s done -- all _they’ve_ done -- to save themselves.

“It’s good to see you, sir,” he’d said, extending his hand with utter relief and no shortage of amusement because -- isn't it funny? Isn't this whole situation just funny, in a way? 

  


  


In hindsight, Bellamy realizes that Dante Wallace had been the one to convince her.

He used to believe that Clarke never doubted a thing she ever did. Bellamy had learned to read people early, to better make sure Octavia stayed safe, but Clarke had always been just outside his comprehension. He could tell when she was truly furious with him; he could tell when she felt with all her being that they had to choose life, or love, or sacrifice over death. But he’d not for a long time been able to read the fine print in her features, and that had infuriated him. It was as though she was concealing something, he had once decided, just to spurn him into justifying his own point of view all the more vigorously.

Walking through the mountain on the day they killed the whole compound, Wallace had said:

“Deliverance comes at a cost. I bear it so they don’t have to.”

Bellamy had watched her face as he’d said it -- and suddenly, he had _understood._

He had understood, all in an instant, what Clarke has always been about. He had understood what motivated everything she did. He’d understood why she never doubted that the alliance with the grounders had been the right course of action; he’d understood what made her walk back into the mountain after the grounders had abandoned them, even though the risk was so high.

Later, he even understood why she shot Wallace, even after he’d helped them get what they needed.

And so he’d finally been in a position to understand it when she had put her hand on the lever and looked into the faces of the very people she was about to kill.

Bellamy had watched her face then as he had when walking with Wallace -- and for the first time, he’d seen her expression for what it was. She was, on the surface, worried she was making the right choice; but just beneath it, she was also already mourning. She was sparing herself nothing in doing the math. She was undertaking the true role of the protector. She was being exactly as ruthless as her people needed her to be.

She was bearing the cost of deliverance, with almost no hesitation.

And as suddenly as he’d understood everything else, Bellamy understood that she had already borne too much of that cost alone.

He’d wrapped his fingers around hers, and sworn to bear it with her. “Together,” he’d said -- a promise he hadn’t known how to keep.

And Clarke hadn’t known how to keep it, either, in the end. But he’d forgiven her for that. He only hoped that she could forgive him someday, too.

  


  


Clarke deserved the better grade in all but one respect -- then as now.

The cost of deliverance, even shared, had still been too much for her. She’d had to leave. She hadn’t even given Bellamy a _chance_ to share her burdens properly. It was just as much, if not moreso, his fault; he got there too late. Clarke had already fallen too deeply into the role. She’d been forced to go it alone for too long.

Even once faced with the opportunity to finally, _truly_ share leadership, she no longer knew how. The only thing she knew was how to be alone.

For Bellamy’s 100% on teamwork five years ago, Clarke had been slated with a 33%. And isn't that...

Is that funny? 

  


  


It _is_ funny, in a way, when Bellamy _actually_ finds her -- when she’s the only thing he can see in the grown-out subway station; when he misses the bounty hunter in the corner. It’s funny, because he in his belief in her had decided to do what what she would’ve done -- to go into the woods on his own. 

And of course, the second he does, he gets stabbed in the fucking leg.

It’s funny, because even if he loses her again, the briefest encounter with her helps him understand once again why she would’ve done it, and why he’d done it too. Deliverance, after all, comes with a cost; and it’s much easier to pay that cost when there’s no one in the background either trying to talk you out of it or whose safety you have to worry about too.

But if Bellamy takes anything away from those fleeting seconds he spends in her presence, it’s that Clarke spent those seconds bargaining for Bellamy’s deliverance -- without hesitation, no matter the cost -- because she still understood, on some level, that he’d tried to carry her burdens by her side.

And in finding her -- if even for seconds -- Bellamy remembers which way is up.

He figures out, as he’s dragging his useless leg along behind him after her, that he’s just as willing to trade anything to get Clarke free as she’d give for him; and if that means he has to take a failing grade on self-sufficiency, he’ll happily take it. He’ll _happily_ take anything, just to have her back.

He'll gladly bear any cost it took, just so that she doesn’t have to ever again.


End file.
